A day in the life: Nick Dobrik

The fifty-year-old buyer and seller of antique jeweller and campaigner for ‘Thalidomiders’ talks about his charmed life

Most of my time I spend in London, where I stay with my parents in Hampstead. My mother suffers from post-polio syndrome and my father recently had a major heart operation, so I make sure they're all right.

My wife, Nadine, and our children, Rachel, who's 18, and Joshua, who's 17, live in our house near Bergerac in France, with four dogs and our cat, Baby. When we first moved there I went backwards and forwards all the time. But now I go less often because I have a jewellery business to run, as well as campaigning on behalf of Thalidomiders and trying to become a Labour MP. My dad wakes me at 6 and we have tea and a chat. Then I jump in the bath, brush my teeth and shave in 10 minutes. Often my dad will follow me in, still chatting. He is one of the nicest